What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Thomas Frank

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire by Matt Taibbi
I am just about finished this book. Since most of the book I have read this month were pretty heavy I am going to check out this one:

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse

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This is one of the very great American novels. It will be an outstanding book 100 years from now, just as the Scarlet Letter is still an outstanding book.
It explains most of what there is to be explained about the Northwest character. Whatever tiny bit Kesey misses you can get from Sherman Alexie's books.

I just finished "The Spies of Warsaw" a recent Alan Furst novel about the run-up to WW2 in Eastern Europe. Like all his stuff, very entertaining. This one I beleve is a little easier to follow than some others because it follows a more ordinary chronology.

Also I have discovered an outstanding woman writer named Carol Glickfield, and highly recommend her two works, Useful Gifts, and Swimming Toward the Ocean. If you like well written personal fiction you might like these. Also her excellent treatment of female characters (men too, really) helped me understand a little more about what it is like to be on the other side of that great divide.

Ha

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"As a general rule, the more dangerous or inappropriate a conversation, the more interesting it is."-Scott Adams

Sort of stumbled onto a book that I really, really liked. It was a National Book Award nomination (2000?). Plainsong by Kent Haruf. If you grew up in a rural area/town you will relate to some of the characters in this excellent book.

Karen Armstrong is one of my favourite authors. I have read "The Narrow Gate", "A History of God", "Muhammad, a prophet for our time". This led me to "No god but God" by Reza Aslan, which I'm halfway through. I'm enjoying all of them.

For your reading pleasure. A lot of these can be downloaded on the Kindle. Just be careful and shop around. The ones in the public domain can be downloaded for under a buck but Amazon will link you to the ones selling much higher.

Karen Armstrong is one of my favourite authors. I have read "The Narrow Gate", "A History of God", "Muhammad, a prophet for our time". This led me to "No god but God" by Reza Aslan, which I'm halfway through. I'm enjoying all of them.

Speaking of mysteries in Great Britain, I have always enjoyed Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe series. Also Elizabeth George and Ian Rankin. Right now I'm reading Jane Haddam's Living Witness, featuring Armenian retired FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian, set in Philadelphia.

Amazing how prolific some of these writers are!

__________________“Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?” J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

"Starfish", by Peter Watts. This is a seriously disturbing book, a work of dystopian fiction reminiscent of some of Robert Silverberg's work from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It maintains a claustrophobic sort of feel through the entire toboggan ride to disaster. This is not a particularly easy read, but can seriously kick-start thinking on the nature of people.

Last week, I read Chasing Cézanne by Peter Mayle. I have not read fiction in a while, and only picked up this up because I have read this British author's series of non-fiction books on life in Provence, France.

Just finished Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck is unlikely the first, but perhaps the most well-known RV boondocker who set out to see the US in a truck-camper with his dog Charley in 1960. I was drawn to it due to my recent interest in RV. It is a worthwhile read to see Steinbeck's description of the US as it was in 1960. However, he did not linger long in each locale to provide details like those I have enjoyed in some current blogs of RV nomads.

Near the end of the book, he observed first hand racism (Ruby Bridges) in New Orleans in 1960. Reading the account, it felt like yesterday yet it has been 50 years.

PS. I just searched this forum for the above title by Steinbeck, and unsurprisingly found that it is a popular book here.

__________________"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man" -- Leon Trotsky

Recently read Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith. One in his series on a lady detective agency in Botswana. Humerous and entertaining. In this book J.L.B. Matekoni who runs the automotive repair shop gets depressed. Mma Makutsi, the detective agency assistent, takes over the car shop and helps a client select a beauty contest winner.

The first book in this series was The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. All the books in this series are short ones and so you don't have to invest a lot to read them.

And I picked up some fiction the other day and I'm reading it fast: Run: A Novel by Ann Patchett.

I read that, a fast read . I am starting "Whistling in the Dark " and " Echoes " both fiction . This summer has been brutally hot in Florida so I've been spending a lot of time in the afternoon reading . I am really looking forward to cooler weather .

Just finished P.D. James' Innocent Blood, and my head is still spinning. It was one of the most unusually constructed books I have read. P.D. James' usual clear-eyed take on English class and society in a situation that unfolds rather than being reconstructed as it would have been in a whodunnit.

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